Guess Who is Coming to Dinner
by Pat Foley
Summary: Uhura and Spock prepare for their first visit from Sarek and Amanda. Complete
1. Chapter 1

**Guess Who is Coming to Dinner**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

"They're coming here?" My voice, that I like to think of as dulcet, rose up into an unlovely squeak. "Here?"

"They are coming to Geneva," Spock elucidated, turning away from hanging up his raincoat. San Francisco was suffering from a rainy spell. "They're going to **stop** here on the way."

"Naturally they'll want to see you," I babbled. "I don't want to be in the way. I'll just…I'll go back to the dorm. I'll bunk with Gaila." She would throw out her Andorian lover once I let her know the urgency of the situation. Gaila might not be human, but she would understand.

"They are coming to see **both** of us," Spock said, coming into the room. "My mother suggests dinner."

"Here?" I looked wildly around at our apartment. His apartment. It was typical Starfleet officer housing, nicer than a dorm room because due to his rank, Spock rated a few rooms, a kitchen, his own bath. Compared to student housing, it was undeniably luxurious.

To host a visiting Federation Ambassador and his Nobel and Zi Magni winning wife, it revealed itself to me in all its true colors. The worn edges of the furniture all seemed to flaunt their shabby seems, the dirt seemed to expand, I could see dust motes in the air that hadn't been there before and smudges on mirrors and glass surfaces. And surely the outside of the building could use a good scrub. "We **can't** have them for dinner here."

"I don't see why not," Spock said, coming in and pushing aside a pile of my notes and classroom computer pads to find a seat – I was in the middle of mid-terms. When I had little above study on my mind I tended to move and walk in a sea of academic flotsam and jetsam that Spock, after a few mild comments, had given up protesting and now tolerantly lived among. "Anyway," he continued, "they will probably take us out to dinner."

"They can't do that!" I said, horrified. Even I knew a prospective daughter-in-law doesn't greet her prospective mother-in-law with anything less than a five course gourmet meal, demonstrable proof of her worthiness to join the family.

Spock raised a curious brow. "Why can't they?"

"Because I have to **cook** for them!" I railed, furious at his denseness. Trust a Vulcan to be a Vulcan when you needed him to understand a few simple human concepts. Like the dreaded fear and rites of passage in meeting prospective in-laws.

Spock's brows rose to his bangs. "Nyota," he hesitated, true to his diplomatic heritage, and went onto say gently, "I **don't** think you want to cook for them."

As delicately as he'd put it, I still bristled. True, I hadn't done much more than heat up prepackaged meals for us on the rare times I did. We ate out a lot too. Or Spock cooked – he had both the patience and the uncanny ability to follow a recipe accurately, whereas I tended to experiment with sometimes drastic results. And I tended to get caught up in schoolwork, so he was invariably the one who, when he came home, made a meal. I didn't expect him to rub that in though.

"I can cook!" I flared at him.

He drew up and back. "Certainly if you wish to cook you can cook," he said, in a manner that said he would henceforth never interfere in the kitchen, and then, of course, just like a man, looked into the inevitably bare kitchen. "What's for dinner?"

"I don't mean cooking for you!" I blustered back.

One thing about living with Vulcans that is easy. After the first few failed attempts in trying to impose their logic on you, they come to expect that humans respond with incomprehensible emotions at all times. It might be hard on them, but they either learn to go with the flow, or the relationship doesn't survive. Spock took this violent reversal with equanimity. "Then if you don't object, I'll make our evening meal. "

"How can you even think of cooking, much less eating, at a time like this?"

He paused on his way to the kitchen, turning back to look at me. "Because I'm hungry?"

"Your parents are coming!"

"Not for 2.4 weeks."

"Your parents are coming!"

"Well, we can't wait dinner until they get here," Spock pointed out reasonably. "You, at the very least, if not starving, would be quite weak with inanition."

I let out a half laugh, half choked sob, and put my head in my hands. "I will never survive this."

He flicked a brow and finally seeming to understand, came back. "You needn't be nervous."

I put my hands down and stared at him. "How can I not be? They are your parents!"

"My parents are **nice**," Spock insisted. "My mother **already** likes you."

I moaned, just thinking about it. "Letters don't mean anything. She has never met me. And what about your father?"

He shrugged. "My father is a practiced diplomat who has survived the most indigestible meals known to Vulcans, in some of the farthest outreaches of the Federation, among the least compatible of warring peoples. I have the utmost confidence that he'll survive a meal at our dining table. Even if you cook."

I was too distressed to respond to that teasing barb. "But I've never met them! They have never met me!"

"It has to happen sooner or later," he pointed out reasonably.

"But it doesn't have to be now. I'll just go somewhere. Anywhere. I'll take my Starfleet survival training early. Surely it will be less onerous than this."

"But they are looking forward to meeting you. My mother has expressly stated so. And my father **would** have said so, except that Vulcans **don't** say such things. But he is."

I stared up at him. "Don't you **realize** this is a rite of passage? It's the feared daughter-in-law to parents visit. I'll never measure up."

"I've met **your** family and survived," he pointed out.

He had too, coming home with me on leave last summer term. I'd warned him my family was clannish and didn't necessarily welcome outsiders. My mother had died when I was a baby, but my Gran, who'd always been so protective of me, had been impressed with Spock, uncaring of his alien appearance. "Good man, that," she had said to me before we left, traitorously in his presence too. "Keep him." I'd been happy about it at the time. Now I felt justified resentment at her throwing me to the Vulcan wolves. He'd been smug about it for weeks too.

"Your father's an ambassador!"

"It's a family position," Spock dismissed.

"Your mother won a Nobel and a Zi when she was twenty!"

"So? You're not applying to be her graduate assistant."

"No, only her daughter-in-law. It's much worse."

"How does her academic career have anything to do with your personal relationship?"

"She'll want to know what I've done to measure up to you!"

Spock flicked a brow in incomprehension at this and then shrugged, unimpressed by that requirement. "Hand her your curriculum vitae."

I tried to clout him with a pillow, but it is useless trying to hit a Starfleet officer superbly trained in hand-to-hand, not to mention a Vulcan too. He blocked me without thought.

"This is going to be a nightmare."

"Nyota, it's going to be all right." He looked down at me, mystified. "Truly."

"Sure," I said without conviction, crushed under the unfairness of my life. Prospective in-laws who live light-years away should **stay** light-years away, not pop up for dinner as if they lived around the block. How had I imagined I was safe from this? And how do I introduce myself to his very proper and distinguished parents? Hi, I'm the girl who has shacked up with your son? I moaned again.

"I don't see why you are so concerned," Spock said, with typical bland Vulcan unconcern. "They will like you."

"No, they won't," I said. "Don't you understand? In-laws never like prospective daughters-in-law. It's a basic tenet of human existence."

He apparently gave up in the face of that. "Well, **I** like you," he said. "Isn't that what counts?"

"In this circumstance? No," I told him flatly.

He shook his head, baffled, like a typical Vulcan would be in the face of a real human crisis, and went off to make dinner. Thinking of his stomach like a typical human male. At times, he honestly could be the worst of both of his species. I longed to tell him so, but I was too sunk in apathy.

"What do you want for dinner?" he asked.

"I'm never going to eat again," I pronounced.

Even all the way from the kitchen, I could hear him sigh.

_To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Guess Who is Coming to Dinner**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 2**

I hotfooted it over to my old dorm room first thing in the morning. Threll was just leaving, muttering a greeting to me, his antenna curling in embarrassment. I moved to brush past him into the room, but Gaila put out a hand to hold me back while a sheepish Lupine underclassman scuttled through, his tail literally between his legs.

"Gaila!" I reproved. "Two?!!"

"Well, there **is** your extra bed," she said. "It's not like **you've** been using it."

"Gaila, just because you **have** a bed free doesn't mean you have to **fill** it!"

"What else are beds for?" she asked. "I'm not going to waste one. " She leaned back against the door frame, green arms folded, and looked at me. "So what is it that brings you back to our student kennel? Things gone wrong high up there in the rarified air of Officer Country? You two finally have a fight? Emotions one, logic zero?"

"Worse, much worse. Gaila, his parents are coming!"

Her eyes widened, the whites showing up sharply in her green face, and she immediately pulled me into a room still redolent with Orion passion while I unburdened myself, telling her everything. It was a relief, after Spock's incomprehension, that she understood me completely.

"**This** is why Orions don't have the institution of marriage," she told me darkly. "In-laws are the death of **every** relationship."

That so confirmed my feelings that I felt simultaneously better and worse. I sat down on my old bed, fastidiously brushing away at the dog hairs clinging to my immaculate uniform, and avoiding looking at the rumpled bed across from me. "But Spock has absolutely no understanding of how I feel," I complained. "Vulcans!"

"He is a man," Gaila pronounced. "Species has absolutely nothing to do with it. They are different creatures entirely. I know them, and I tell you that men never understand how a woman feels. Except in one way," she added. "That is all they are good for." She shifted off her bed and went to study her reflection in the mirror, running long sharp-edged fingernails through her hair, as always disdaining a comb. "But what does it matter?" she asked airily. "You've had him. He's been good for you, up till now. At least, so **you** say. But it's clearly time for a change. You have your looks," she gave me an appraising stare from the mirror, and nodded, satisfied that years in a committed relationship hadn't yet ruined me in spite of her dire warnings otherwise. "You have your life. But you've been with him for much, much too long. I have told you that. And now you see the result. When their families start coming around." she made it sound as if a Federation Ambassador and his wife were cockroaches, coming out in the night. "It's **much** better to get rid of them. Don't **wait** for them to come," she sagely advised. "Find a new man now. There are so many to choose from. That Lupine—"

"I am **not** going to the dogs," I said. "Vulcans are enough of a stretch."

"It's either another man or them." She pointed out. "If you get rid of him now, then you won't have to deal with his parents."

It was true of course, but it seemed a drastic solution. "I was rather hoping some major interstellar incident could occur, and his father would get called away to deal with it," I said forlornly. And added with some frustration. "We've spent four years studying tactics from a hundred years of Federation conflicts. And **now** where's a good war when I need one?"

"No chance of that." Gaila leaned forward into the mirror, picking at her teeth. "Sarek is coming for the Federation High Council session. I saw it on the news days ago. No one would dare start a war now when peace has been decreed high up there in the pure air of Geneva." She had the typical Fleet disdain for the diplomatic services. "I thought you'd surely have seen the newscasts."

"I haven't. Why am I the last to know everything?"

"Probably because you're such a swot when you are studying for exams. Never raise your head out of your books. I've told you that you need to stop being such a perfectionist. See what can happen? You're so busy reading theories that your life changes with you unaware. Now," having finished arranging her mane, she stepped back and tossed it, apparently satisfied, though I thought it looked largely the same as before. Then she turned to me eagerly, her pupils dilated with excitement. "If you don't want the Lupine, there's this Caitan I've had my eye on. We could --"

"Oh, Gaila please," I cut her off. "No dogs, no cats."

"Pity," she said, frowning in disappointment. "I thought it would be **so** much fun to have them in here with us together. You know, a dog, a "

"You don't seem to realize that I **love** Spock." She'd turned back to primping in the mirror. In love with only herself. "You don't really understand love, do you Gaila?"

"No," she said, with blithe unconcern, giving a sinuous stretch, eyeing her reflection. "Orions don't. But I think that love is what you have left when you are not feeling passion. Orions prefer passion. It **is** our nature."

"Well, I definitely like passion, but I kind of like love too," I said. "I like having both."

She turned back to me. "Then I guess you have made your choice. You are stuck with him. And his parents."

"I guess I am," I said slumping at the thought, and turning toward the door.

"But if you change your mind," Gaila said, "There's this Piscean--"

I turned back. "Gaila, how can you possibly mate with a fish?" I said.

She regarded me as if I were completely dense. "Silly, we use the Academy Pool."

"Doesn't the chorine bother his gills?"

"Oh," she said, her brow clearing. "That's why he was inflamed. I worried it was some infection — You know, it just occurred to me. It would be so much fun to get the Caitan together with the Piscean. Except the Caitan doesn't like water. Do you think--"

"Next time, use the salt water pool, Gaila," I said, and. brushing a little dog hair off my uniform, pushed out the door.

I had to rush to make a meeting with my thesis advisor. I took a moment to make sure I shook off my mood as well as a few more stray hairs, so that I appeared entirely businesslike. The woman whose office I was about to enter was a consummate professional.

Keitlan Farnsworth was one of the luminaries of the linguistics world, a woman with a formidable intelligence so razor sharp you could scar your brain in just one session with her, except that she had such personal charm she could leave you in shreds without getting a drop of your vital fluids on herself. Besides being my advisor, she was my idol. She'd successfully done what I planned to do one day: integrate Starfleet and academic careers, and she adroitly managed both. She even had a popular media presence and career. When the Federation news services needed an opinion on some outrageous uncoded signal identified in the heavens, it was her face you saw giving expert analysis on the newsfeeds. She was also married to an old Starfleet family. Her husband was Cochran Hughes, head of Games and Theory, the premier tactical branch of the Academy, one in which Spock had a part time assistantship. And his father, Gervaise Hughes, was an Admiral of the Blue Fleet.

I wasn't too worried about this meeting. In spite of my determination to put my in-laws' visit out of my mind, I was having trouble giving Keitlan my undivided attention. But I was ahead on my thesis schedule and it -- a hopefully groundbreaking theory about how brain neuroanatomy among species corresponded to linguistic syntax, and the corollary for artificial intelligence and compulinguistics – was coming along well. But mere genius never satisfied Keitlan. She tapped one area of my thesis meditatively with a pale, pristinely manicured fingernail.

"I don't think you've done enough here about word creation, and language evolution. It seems to me you need to integrate more the visual-motor centers of the cortex with right brain gestalt theories and draw the correlation with computer assembly language and software development. Don't you agree? "She looked at me kindly, as if it were something anyone would immediately see and agree with, and made some notes on her calendar. "Work up another chapter or two on that and we'll review it in a couple of weeks."

"A couple of weeks," I said, without much enthusiasm. Just what I needed, a major research thrust just when I was expecting future in-laws to descend. "Right."

Keitlan looked at me curiously. "Is something wrong, Nyota? You don't seem your usual self. Are you ill?"

"No." I mustered a shadow of my usual smile. "It's fine. I'm fine. I'll be ready."

"Something **is** wrong."

I shrugged. "It's nothing. I'm just expecting Spock's parents to be arriving for a visit."

"That's right," she sat back, nodding. "I saw that Sarek will be attending the Federation High Council session in Geneva. How **nice** for Spock to be able to see them. It must be quite a while since they've had a chance to be together."

"Yes, I'm sure he's pleased. " I sighed. "It's just that **I** have never met them before and so—"

"Oh, my dear!" Keitlan leaned forward and grabbed my hand. "You mean this will be your first meeting with your future in-laws?"

"Yes. Of course, I know it will be fine, but—"

"Well!" She opened up the window of her calendar and changed the date. "We can just push this forward a couple of weeks!"

"No, it will be all right, really—"

She leaned back meditatively. "How I remember when I first met the Admiral and his wife." She gave me an ironic glance. "Cocky said it would be fine, of course, but what do men know? His mother had been a Billings, you understand. **Very** old guard Starfleet. Back then everything had to be done just so. I was a wreck just arranging the luncheon. The china had to be exactly the right pattern for our service branch, not to mention the crystal. Steamed in lemon juice and ammonia for that extra sparkle. The flatware shined to perfection. I thought I would lose my mind."

I swallowed hard. This was a woman whom the authorities turned to for her coolly analytical decoding skills when a new incomprehensible threat came barreling over Federation airwaves, and she had been derailed by place settings?

"But it went all right," I said hopefully.

She regarded me absently. "Well, Adeline never **did** forgive me for getting the order of precedence out of whack at the receiving line. So silly of me not to have realized that a Yellow Admiral doesn't have equal rank with a Blue. Still she had thawed **noticeably** by the time the children came."

"I imagine so," I said dazedly.

"And we're **quite** good friends now, of course. Not that I don't stay on my toes." She shook her head and shuddered a bit. "Do you know, I still buy a new outfit every time we go out to luncheon? She's so fussy about appearance. Straight seams, you know. Not a hair out of place. **Never** lets **herself** go. I get a full body workover twice a month just on the off chance I'll meet up with her."

"Right."

She patted my hand. "But I'm sure you'll do fine, dear. You just take all the time you need. This –" she shook her head at my thesis as if it were the scribbling of a child, "can wait another week or two. You don't meet your prospective in-laws for the first time every day," she trilled gaily. She ushered my stunned body out of her office where I collapsed limply against the wall.

"She forgave her by the time the children came?" I said weakly. "Oh, my god."

I had a personal combat class before noon, and it helped. I rammed that pugel stick into my opponents' midsections as if they were an incoming Klingon -- or Vulcan – invasion force. My instructor complimented me and promoted me to team captain on the strength of it, and my classmates gave me a wide berth as we walked back to the locker rooms. Even after I had put the pugel stick down.

"What's gotten into you, Nyota?" Delia, the ousted captain, so versed in hand-to-hand combat she gave private lessons in special tactics on the side, complained to me. "You were on fire today."

"My in-laws-to-be are coming," I muttered. "Haven't you heard? It seems everyone else knew ahead of me."

"Oh, my god, girl," I was suddenly grabbed, and facing Delia's arresting finger, complete with sharp-edge nail, pointing directly at my eyes. "**Don't** get your hair done!"

"What?" I gasped, staring cross-eyed at the wicked nail millimeters from my eyeballs and wondering if the rumors that she'd once had her own street gang were true.

"When I was first meeting Edmund's parents, I wanted to look good, you know? And I went to that hairdresser Lacy recommends? She ruined it, girl. **Ruined** it."

I shook myself free of her grasp. "I'm not thinking about my **hair**."

Delia gave it and me a critical eye. "Well. You may be fine. Just don't say I didn't warn you. Lacy already learned her lesson once." She picked up her pugel stick and sauntered off.

I let out a ragged gasp.

It was time to call out the emergency reinforcements. I flipped open my communicator and called my Gran. I poured out my heart to her, and waited breathlessly for her advice.

"Nyota, it is foolish to worry." Her comforting voice came across complacently. I could almost see the small village of my youth. "Why, they are lucky to get you. Whatever you arrange will be fine. My granddaughter has style," she added proudly. "She would never do anything _shenzi_."

"I know. But I'm not sure what to do. What do you think?"

"I remember when my parents arranged a meeting with my in-laws," she said meditatively. "They went all out. Brewed beer for days. My bride price was the best in our village. My father was an elder, you know. I was quite the catch. Even so," she added worriedly, "he was concerned about being thought stingy, so he sacrificed our fattest goat. **That** made the dinner a success," she finished up with satisfaction. "You might try that."

"Gran, they're **Vulcans**!" I stared at her tiny image on the phone. "V**egetarians**, you know? I can't sacrifice a goat!"

"What are you saying, child?" she argued. "We're mostly vegetarians ourselves. But on these ceremonial occasions, everyone likes a good goat."

I moaned and flipped the phone shut.

I went looking for Spock at a break in my classes. He was up in the main computer section of Games and Theory, plotting the destruction of us poor students, not to mention Fleet tactics in general, like some vengeful god. It had high level security clearance only. He had to come down to a less restricted area to see me.

"Nyota. Is something wrong?" he asked, his brow furrowed.

The concern on his face, however minute the expression, made me go to him, uncaring of rank and the appearance we usually tried to keep up in Starfleet Central. "I've had such a horrible morning. Everyone is telling me what to do and **none** of it works. Gaila pushing dogs and cats and even fish at me. Kaitlin going on about Starfleet china. Soaking pugel sticks in lemon juice. Finding a good hairdresser. I don't think there **are** any goats available in San Francisco. And I don't want to be _shenzi_, but I'm sure a dinner like my Gran had for her in-laws would be a **disaster** for your parents. "

"Why would a goat need to go to a hairdresser?" he asked, mystified.

"Why in the galaxy can't there be a war when we really need one?" I finished up with an anguished cry. "Like **now**!"

"We need a war?" His brows rose up to his bangs. "Nyota, what are you--"

"It doesn't matter," I said, pushing it all aside, and leaning back from him to stare up determinedly at his face. "I've made a decision. Your parents **can** come to Earth."

His brows rose even higher, if that was possible, but his voice was deadpan. "I'm sure the Federation Council will be relieved that you've extended the invitation."

I wasn't interested in Vulcan irony. "I've got to get through these mid-terms first. But starting next week, we are going to get ready. No _shenzis _here. It's going to be Dinner Central."

"Dinner Central," he repeated, and flicked a brow. "Fascinating. Nyota, I think it is entirely possible that you **have** lost your mind."

"You don't get this," I said darkly. "But you will. You will."

_To be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3

**Guess who is Coming to Dinner**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 3**

After that meeting, I put their proposed visit firmly out of my mind until I got my mid-terms out of the way. Though I tried to be more careful about keeping my study materials picked up. Not that I'm in any way untidy, but Spock barely seemed to make an impact on the apartment. In many ways it looked the same after he arrived back at the Academy from a long starship tour of duty as it did when he was on the Enterprise. I always seemed to add noticeable clutter.

I'd also decided to make a concerted effort to make dinner for the practice alone. My lack of culinary skills wasn't entirely my fault. Living in student housing for years, I hadn't had a real kitchen of my own, unless you count those nasty communal dorm ones whose lack of amenities is made up for with excess dirt. I'd never had the time or interest either, not when it was just for me. I preferred to go out with friends than stay home and have little dinner parties.

Though right now my friends were becoming something of an irritant. The communications grapevine in Starfleet was faster than any known high-nano device. This afternoon alone I received four calls from ostensively well meaning friends, who'd called to congratulate me on my team captaincy, and offer a few choice remarks about steering clear of Delia. Or, even more ominously, who had heard of the Ambassador's intended visit and offered their own horror story encounters with invaders of the in-law kind. A few invited us out to dinner.

"Spock has long duty later on," I told them. "Anyway, I'm cooking."

The reactions varied from disbelief to incipient hilarity.

"Trying to get him out of his long shift with food poisoning?" one jokester quipped.

"I'll look for him later in the base infirmary," was the usual response.

Eventually, I'd had enough of that and set the phone to red alerts only.

I had made dinner. And taste tested it to ensure it wasn't as fatal as say, a phaser blast, though slow poison might still have been a possibility. I was splitting my attention between my hyperphysics text -- the rest of my netbooks put neatly out of sight, and idly wondering if Spock and I should start inviting a few friends over for a meal rather than our going out all the time. Spock wasn't anti-social. He always complacently joined in when we went out in company. He simply seldom instigated such gatherings. I didn't know how Vulcans in general were about such things, so I did a netsearch on the words. The results were, of course, totally useless.

Then, under all the pressures of the day and the future visit to come, I did what I had sworn I would never do. I typed in his mother's name into the net. To ensure I didn't get a slew of academic references, I added the word social.

Even for a future Starfleet officer, the results were daunting. I was regaled with swirling accounts of the elegant dinners for 200 hosted in a building that looked like all the Terran castles that ever were, on steroids. Vulcan steroids. Interstellar menus, fabulous ambiance, palatial settings and a hostess who looked as if she didn't spend her afternoons whacking her friends, however much they might deserve it, with a pugel stick.

Clearly I had to do something to compare. I read, then added a little more pepper to my sauce. Read some more and restlessly fluffed a few pillows, in the way of being a grand hostess, au courant with the latest fine foods and homes. Then I looked around our standard service apartment, took a look at what I was competing with, stopped kidding myself and resolutely closed the search windows.

I was considering starting that elusive interstellar incident myself – where were Klingons when you really needed them? -- when the door cycled, and Spock breezed through, bringing in the scent of rain and fog that in San Francisco swept in from the sea at most twilights.

"Did you ever find a hairdresser for your goat?" he asked, picking up the conversation from lunchtime without missing a beat, while he shrugged out of his coat.

I made a face while I studied his. It must have something to do with the shape of his mouth that he could seem to be smiling even with a straight face. "Very funny. How was **your** day at Games and Theory? Finished plotting the destruction of the graduating class yet?"

"Classified," he said, reflexively turning circumspect, his very convincing Vulcan mask revealing nothing. Which put to death all my theories about the shape of his mouth.

When he turned around, he proved to have also been concealing two pint containers, one of raspberries. That wasn't unusual for him. They were in season and they were the kind of low sugar fruit Vulcans favored. And if Spock was any guide, Vulcans preferred their food fresh. He was a regular customer of the farm market carts that surrounded the Academy; the valley farmers plying on service people's weakness for non-reconstituted food. The officers called them bumboat carts after the ancient mariner term for boat peddlers who used to circle navy ships. First year students were not supposed to patronize them. Part of our Academy training was to prove that if we managed a deep space mission we would be able to handle living solely on ship's fare. A lot of students cheated – it was an easy rule to circumvent. It was typical of Spock that when I'd been in first year, he had shared that restriction whenever he was with me, unmentioning, as if it were the most logical thing that if I couldn't eat such things, neither would he. And also typical that when my restriction ended, he went back to his preferred eating habits, likewise without a single comment. Perhaps that's why I wasn't too surprised when I saw the other carton contained my once a week indulgence -- vanilla Swiss almond ice cream.

"It's not Sunday," I said, referring to the only day that I splurged with a dessert other than fruit.

"A celebration of your captaincy?" he offered.

"You heard about that?"

"Janders warned me not to get on your bad side – at least when you had access to a pugel stick." He looked a little amused, since of course as a Vulcan he could make mincemeat of most any human, however armed. "That victory aside, I thought that after the events of this morning, some small palliative might be called for." He went to take the containers in the kitchen and drew up, taking in the sight of the dining area with its covered dishes sitting ready. "You made dinner."

"It's not flattering to sound quite so surprised," I said. "It's just a salad and some pasta. The sauce is fresh though. I bought the tomatoes and basil from a bumboat cart."

His brows were still raised. "Thank you," he said.

It was the kind of thing that always highlighted for me the differences between us. The things he failed to expect of me.

Minus the periodic tours of duty that took him back to the Enterprise, we'd been together for a couple of years now. At first, we'd both kept some emotional distance. Him because he was Vulcan. Me because from the first moment of our meeting, I'd been concerned about even having too personal a conversation with an alien, worried over the fact that it was so easy to get in over your head.(*1) I hadn't forgotten my first instructor in field work warning me that Terran humans' excessive friendliness can be grossly mistaken by non-Terran humans and aliens. Smile at one, he warned, and they may end up following you forever. The irony was that in all that, it was I who ended up following Spock. All the way into Starfleet. Even after all this time, I'd never quite banished that worry.

In spite of our on again, off again relationship, and our determination to be sensible about the fact that we couldn't expect to always be together, we had both come to find the separations increasingly difficult. I hadn't planned on marrying so soon, before establishing my career. Not to anyone. Not even to Spock, however much it seemed we complemented each other.

One of the chief reasons for our decision to make our relationship official when I graduated was purely logistical. Unromantic as it might seem, all other qualifications being equal, married couples **were **given preference regarding joint postings on deep space commissions. Spock's commission was with the Enterprise. But as for me, there were a dozen starships and hundreds of smaller research and scout vessels that I could get posted to. I wouldn't know until I graduated where my fate would lead me. Gaila might tease me about being a swot, but I'd been determined to make it the Enterprise, his ship, the newest and best starship in the Fleet, by the sheer weight of my exemplary ability, not by favoritism or nepotism.

But as time had gone on and the day of reckoning drew near, I had become unwilling to rely on the judgment of some faceless posting officer. While I had every expectation I was going to graduate as the top rated linguist in the Academy, and earn that Enterprise posting, I was unwilling to leave it totally in Fleet's hands. There were dozens of good Fleet reasons apart from merit that simple service requirements -- vacancies, needed specialties, other's preferences and favoritism -- might dictate posting me on some other equally – to them – meritorious ship. And then it might take me years to get back to the Enterprise. If we wanted to stay together, even have the chance to make that long term decision to marry with all that it meant for Vulcans, we had to make at least a human commitment now. Or we might lose that opportunity forever. After a few late night conversations with Spock, we'd both agreed it made good logical sense to register our intent to marry.

Starfleet had been perfectly pleased with the situation. Spock was a valuable officer. They didn't want to risk losing him back to Vulcan. I had proven myself as more than capable of making it in a service career and had an exemplary Academy record. While there were always risks that a relationship could go sour, the consensus in Starfleet was that when fellow officers married it cemented their allegiance to Starfleet and they would have a much better track record of staying married and in Starfleet as opposed to officer/civilian unions. The few senior officers who knew had let me know they approved of our decision, and me. So I had been doubly welcomed into the Starfleet fold, both from ability and from alliance.

But in spite of our joint decision, in spite of all this familiarity, of going to sleep in each other's arms at night and waking together in the morning, of current association and future commitment, privately Spock still so often treated me as if I were a privileged guest to his life. As if he were sometimes surprised by all our relationship would mean in his future. His life could still so easily stay self-contained. A closed circle. Even down to this place. I lived here, but it still felt like I was a guest. He never seemed to expect me to be more than that. At least, not yet.

Of course the apartment was largely self-maintenance. And he had his own routine before I moved in, that largely involved picking up after himself so constantly, in a Vulcan superneat way, that the place never had a ghost of a chance to need me to do much. I had never been bothered by that before. I had more important things on my mind than housework and certainly hadn't moved in to take care of it. But I suddenly felt bothered by my lack of presence in that area of his life.

I put down a forkful of salad and looked at him. "Do you know, you never ask me to run errands for you?"

He divested his attention from his appreciate consumption of dinner. "Why would you expect me to?"

"Or even ask me to do a share of the household chores?"

He raised a brow. "You have your studies and classes."

"But **you** work. You never considered that you might, just sometimes, need my help around here?"

His brow furrowed. "Around here," he repeated. He looked around at the tiny, standard service officers quarters, purposely designed with minimal maintenance in mind. "What in the way of largely automated household chores could I possibly require assistance with?"

I wasn't about to be defeated by logic. I pointed my fork at him accusingly, a miniature pugel stick. "Even when you come off a 36 hour shift, you don't even so much as ask me to process a meal, much less cycle your laundry."

He put his fork down at this, and looked at me curiously. "It takes twenty seconds to put garments in the fresher. Another twenty to take them out. It would take less time to do the chore than to ask."

"Well, you routinely cycle mine when you do yours. Why is that? And aren't you doing it because you see that I need it?"

"I have never really considered the issue," he said, all injured innocence. "It was just there to be done."

"Well, think about it now."

He flicked a brow in judicious consideration. "No doubt you had something more vital to do with those twenty seconds," he suggested. And picked up his fork again as if hoping that would be the end of it.

I shook my head and put my hand over his, stopping him.

He stared down at my arresting hand and, giving a little sigh, a Vulcan concession to my emotion, spoke to it rather than me. "Nyota, may I ask why are we arguing about laundry? Because clearly this discussion cannot be about that."

I tightened my hand on his. "I just have this horrible feeling that if I disappeared, you wouldn't even notice. Spock." I shook my head and appealed to him. "Do you need me at all?"

"For laundry?" He asked as if still trying to understand.

"Your parents **are** coming!"

He sat back and regarded me. "Their laundry will be done," he said, deadpan.

"This is no time for joking around."

"I cannot correlate the subjects in this conversation."

"Their coming just makes…us… somehow, more real. And sometimes I don't know if we are. And if we are, if it is right."

He put down his fork and stared at me. "Are you saying you are reconsidering--" he stopped short as if he refused to go on.

"No," I said quickly. Then… "Yes. I want to know that you need me."

"For housework?"

"In your life!"

"Does not the fact that you are here, that we have committed to a marriage, make that obvious?"

"No!"

He drew up a little and gave me a look that I knew well, that said I was putting human demands on him, more than he was comfortable with. It was unjust, since he rarely seemed to put Vulcan ones on me, but then, he had grown up in a Vulcan household where the chief female protagonist was human. He'd learned his side of this equation early. I hadn't learned the corollary for him.

"Nyota," he said, his voice very soft. "Why I wish you to be here has everything to do with you, and nothing whatsoever to do with laundry and dinner."

"Don't you see that it's all part of a piece? Making a life together. Not just two people cohabitating side by side. And just for the record, I'm not sure that I want to give dinner parties for 200 people!"

His brows rose to his bangs at that. "My parents are two, not two hundred. They did not suddenly divide and expand like bacteria."

"I'm not talking about that. I…" I drew a breath and confessed. "I read some things on the net about your mother."

"I wouldn't do that," he said, shaking his head. "Much of what is said about her is sensationalistic."

"It's what's **true** that bothers me more. Including that she's a fabulous hostess."

He tilted his head in concession to that. "I've never heard it said she was any good with a pugel stick, however," he offered.

I threw a frustrated blow in his general direction. He blocked it automatically, without losing that half smirk.

I sighed and settled down. "Maybe I just need to hear you say that you love me." I said, falling back on the three words that throughout the history of human relations, purported to make everything that was wrong all right again between couples. Human ones, that is.

Except that he wasn't human. That magic phrase wasn't going to work for us. One of the many issues in our relationship which would have no easy answers. He drew a deep breath. "I…can't say those words."

"I know that it's provincial of me to ask," I admitted.

"I simply cannot."

I bit my lip and watched him, seeing his face go shuttered with control, with waiting. I realized he was waiting for me. To what? Say I couldn't live with him without that? Walk out the door? As I looked at him, he gradually grew very still.

"I'm sorry," I said, shaking my head and shivering, in spite of the warmth of the room, the setting one of our many compromises between human and Vulcan needs. "I've just had this really bad day. I'm being unfair. Forgive me."

He rose silently and went to adjust the temperature controls. It was part and parcel of his character, his nature, that he saw was needed and did it to the best of his ability. Coming back to the table, he seemed more resolute. "Isn't it enough knowing my regard for you?" he asked seriously, teasing aside.

I knew it would have to be enough. "I guess so." Some part of me still rebelled enough that I looked away as I said it.

"We neither of us can change what we are," he said. "But I have had somewhat more practice in dealing with that reality than you have. Up till now, perhaps." He sighed, just a little. "I have to go."

"You've hardly eaten," I said looking at his barely touched meal. "And you've got a long duty shift ahead of you."

"I have eaten enough."

"I hate your thirty-six hour shifts."

"You will dislike them more when you begin them yourself," he said with an ironic brow. "They are difficult for humans."

I knew that, and I wasn't looking forward to them. Like intern doctors, Starfleet officers in training served one thirty six hour duty shift a week, to simulate actual shipboard stress or emergency conditions and exigencies. Being the most junior command officer in Games and Theory, Spock got stuck with one, and on the worst day too. Friday night to early Sunday morning. Being Vulcan, it was no particular stress for him to work a long shift. It always left me at loose ends on Friday and Saturday nights, going out alone or with friends. And it did mean he then had all Sunday and Sunday night free. The next junior officer picked up the slack after him. We had that whole day free to spend together. It could be worse.

"I know. I think the whole long duty shift is just a ruse though. The practice was designed to give senior officers a whole weekend free."

"Perhaps. But such shifts are part of a service career." His hand covered mine and then he leaned down, and kissed me lightly. "Go out," he suggested.

I tightened my hand on his and turned the kiss into something more too. "I'm going to miss you."

"It's not going to rain on Sunday," he said. "We can go to the park. See if you are as good with a bat as a pugel stick."

I made a face. "I'll leave that to you," I said. But after he left and I had cleaned up the dishes, and made a face at the ice cream, refusing to be tempted, I did take his suggestion, put on some happy clothes and my best smile and went out. It was frustrating to actually be in a relationship and yet not have him around on Friday and Saturday nights, to be continually fending off pickup requests from non-Fleet yahoos who didn't know my situation. But it was better than staying at home and studying till facts came out of my ears. All work and no play made Uhura a very unhappy girl.

Sunday did dawn bright and clear, and before I was even quite awake, I heard Spock rummaging in the kitchen. Being cooped up for thirty six hours behind a command console in Games and Theory didn't make him tired. It made him rammy, impatient for a long run. I managed to tempt him into something a little less strenuous, but then after that and an hours' nap, rather than spend a leisurely morning with the Sunday news sheets, he was back in the kitchen, this time, tossing water and juice bottles into a bag – for me. He was like a camel and could go days without water – and some food for a picnic lunch. I shrugged into sweats over my running shorts and grabbed a blanket. I had to rush to catch up with him as we headed out the door.

"This never ceases to surprise me about you," I said, jogging to keep up with him. "I thought Vulcans were perpetual swots."

"We are," he said. "In between hiking on the Forge. There being no Forge in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park will have to do."

On the way he was waved at and importuned by numerous bumboat cart owners, who knew him well. We added some berries and grapes to our bag, and some sugar snap peas, which Spock ate raw, as if they were candy. He always seemed surprised that I preferred them steamed.

"How does a fresh air fiend end up in Starship service?" I asked as we dumped our blanket and supplies in an area of the park largely claimed by Starfleet personnel. One thing about the perennial presence of Starfleet officers and cadets there -- no one ever pinched your stuff anymore. It might as well have been left in a bank vault. I stripped down from sweats to running shorts.

"A similar question might be how does a girl who grew up loving the freedom of Africa's hills and plains exchange them for the confines of a starship?" he asked before taking off and all I could see was the soles of his running shoes.

It was a question that involved too long an answer, and he was already yards ahead. I put my long legs to good use.

After a six mile circuit of the park and the trails around the bay and the bridge, I left him to do another ten and went back to our blanket to catch up on my sleep. When he returned, he was not even breathing hard in our light gravity, as fresh as if he hadn't spent the last 36 hours on duty and the rest in strenuous activity of one sort or another. I offered him my water bottle and he took a polite drink, then settled down to munch peas and watch with alert interest one of the inevitable baseball games being held by Fleet personnel.

Baseball is something of an institution at Starfleet Academy. Ferociously competitive games are played between returning "old boy" officers and new cadets. The officers are experienced and deadly. The cadets are young and in better condition, generally. The match up between the two is something to see.

Spock was not much of one for Terran sports, but he had an appreciation for the sheer mathematical precision and elegance of baseball. The geometry and physics of it, all lines and vectors and trajectories. The linear methodology of the action. The lack of physically beating up on one's fellow players -- as was found in football. Of all the team sports that a Vulcan might find acceptable, it was the most suitable.

And he was good at it. Almost too good. In his cadet career he had been famous for pitching numerous no-hit shut-outs (*2), and he had a deadly arm. Out of fairness, he was no longer on any particular team. But he was often importuned to pinch hit in the park pickup games.

"You haven't forgotten," I said, waving a bunch of grapes at him, "that when my exams are over we are going to really concentrate on getting ready for your parent's arrival?"

"What is there to prepare for?" Spock asked, eyes intent on an infield play.

"I'm not going to offer them grapes and raw peas. That's why I need you to help me. Getting in their favorite foods. What does your father like to eat?"

"Of Terran foods? He's been known to eat grapes and raw peas."

"Cooked foods!"

His eyes panned to mine. "Starfleet cadets, definitely. Particularly those majoring in Linguistics."

I made a face. "Did your father ever tell you that you tease way too much for a Vulcan?"

He shifted reflexively on the blanket, slightly discomfited. "My father, no. Being aware of my half human heritage, he was always relatively tolerant of my behavior in that regard. But my Vulcan teachers often reiterated that fact." He tilted his head. "I had hoped, in a Terran society, it would be less noticeable."

"It is most absolutely not."

"How regrettable." He spared a glance for me. "Nyota, I've already told you their visit will not be a problem. If you truly don't wish to have them take us out to dinner, they will eat whatever we choose to serve them, and be perfectly polite about it. They are, after all, diplomats."

"What if I served your father a goat?"

His brows rose to his bangs. "So that is where the goat comes in. I had been speculating for days about that."

"It's perfectly reasonable for me to respect my heritage," I argued. "Brides have been walking down European and American aisles for hundreds of years in ridiculous outmoded white dresses that they spend thousands of credits on and can only wear once. But it's not my tradition. And I'll have a goat at my wedding if I choose."

"I never said one word against the goat. Have as many as you like."

"But what would your parents think? Seriously."

"My mother would no doubt ask your grandmother dozens of questions. She is fascinated by multicultural ceremonies. It is her profession, after all. And so long as he did not have to eat the goat, my father would be indifferent."

"What if it was a terrible insult if he didn't?"

He blinked at that. "To eat the goat? Cooked, I take it. If it was absolutely required to do so he would simply exercise Vulcan control."

I had to be satisfied with that, I supposed. A couple of officers left the game to go on duty, and some of the players urged us to get into the game. I skimmed into my sweats – I didn't want to slide in shorts -- and went first into right field, while Spock went to the mound. But I didn't have to worry too much about my fielding. With Spock pitching, no one was going to get a hit. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head, and with that little smile curving his mouth he pitched those balls so fast you could hardly see them fly. He struck out three batters and then we went into bat. Spock hit one out into center field that no one tried to stop -- we all watched it barrel toward the bay like it had been shot out of a canon while Spock jogged around the bases at a leisurely pace for a Vulcan, not bothering to slide home. But after he crossed the plate a cadet ran up to him with the communicator he'd left in the dugout. One doesn't slide into home with a communicator on your hip.

"Commander Spock, you have a message."

"I hope you aren't being called back to duty," I said. It wouldn't be the first time if someone were sick. Or his superiors had dreamed up some special assignment.

He shrugged indifferently, used to the exigencies of a service career, and flipped the unit open. As he replayed the message, his relaxed posture straightened, and I thought it was duty. Then his eyes hooded and I saw his lower lip push up slightly. So subtle a difference, if you weren't used to studying his face, as I was, with all my familiarity with Vulcan body language, book learning and Spock combined. I realize it couldn't be something as minor as another duty shift -- he would have come back to his normal demeanor already instead of still appearing pensive.

"Spock? I went over to him. "What is it?"

He glanced over at me as if he had quite forgotten where he was for a moment. Then he looked ironic. "You may have gotten your wish."

"My wish? My eyes widened. "You don't mean…?"

"No, not a war," he said. "But my parents have been requested to attend special strategy session in Washington. There are arrangements still being made – many others are involved -- but there is a chance it will take place on the day they were to spend here. My mother had left a message to warn us," he met my eyes meaningfully, "before we make any preparations."

"I'm sorry," I said.

He nodded curtly. I knew him well enough to realize he was restraining his emotions, rather than rejecting mine. But a light had gone out of his eyes.

"You're next up," he said, handing me the bat and went off behind the dugout, flipping his communicator open, as if preparing to send a message in relative privacy.

I couldn't listen in but I wanted to. And I realized I was disappointed too. So disappointed the first ball nearly took off my nose. I was so deep in thought I had forgotten what I was doing.

"Strike one," the umpire called.

"Come on, Nyota!" Some of my team members called.

I got into stance and stared down the pitcher. And when that next ball came over the plate I hit it with all the frustration of the past week. It sailed past the outfielders, and I knew I was going to get a run. But as I slid into home plate I saw Spock, just outside the dugout, talking quietly into his communicator. And I knew, in some respects, I really had missed the ball. It wasn't like me, not at all. A regrettable, if understandable, human lapse on my part. But I vowed I was going to handle this better.

No matter what we faced.

_To be continued…_

_*1 see Linguistics_

*2 see the Academy Letters


	4. Chapter 4

**Guess Who is Coming To Dinner**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 4**

Starships travel at warp speed. Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. But nothing travels faster in Starfleet than gossip.

I didn't mention anything about the Ambassador's changed schedule. Spock was as likely to talk about his family at work as he was likely to talk about his love life. (That didn't stop people from asking **me **about his love life).

But somehow everyone knew the proposed visit was off. Perhaps because Starfleet is dependent upon funding from the Federation Council and everyone knows Ambassador Sarek sits on the Council's Starfleet Allocation Subcommittee, his movements were of more interest to Starfleet personnel.

Or perhaps everyone knew the same way I knew, even without hearing the official word. Perhaps other of Spock's close associates just perceived how disappointed he was at the prospect of not seeing his parents. It's true that compared to humans, Vulcans have very little expression. But they are not expressionless. If you spent much time with Spock, you could learn to read him.

Much as I loved that little quirk in the corner of Spock's mouth when he was amused or content, now that curve had shifted just a fraction, to an under-turned comma, a Pilot Small expression from a Lois Lenski book, the barest fraction of a disappointed pout.

Outwardly he was still as equanimitable as ever. Inwardly, he was disappointed, and dare I say it, homesick for his parents. It was all the more poignant for his saying nothing about it. He threw himself into his work so thoroughly, as if trying to distract himself from his own disappointment, that he was barely home. When he was home, he was barely interested in food and sleep.

I let him know I was sorry. He let me know that he was unwilling to discuss it. Our relationship and his nature had dovetailed in that he willingly shared joy with me, but he still tended to retreat into himself when something upset him. Expressing his disappointment seemed to make it worse for him. So I offered him as much comfort as I could when he came home, let him know I would help him anyway I could and then waited for him to work his way past it.

Like everyone else, my thesis advisor was also aware that the revised schedule of the Federation Council had cancelled the proposed dinner. She had moved back my deadline to its former time.

So we went back to our regular lives.

I had been buried in my thesis for days, neglecting almost everything else, fighting to make my new deadline. The apartment had once more gotten cluttered with my netbooks and papers. Buried in concepts and theories, with Spock mostly gone, I wore the most comfortable clothes I had, let makeup and nail polish go, and saw little more than the screen of my reference materials.

One evening, when Spock had long duty again, the door chimed. This was unusual. All my friends had been warned not to call until after my deadline.

I thrust my stylus into my hair, which actually was holding a few others in different colors. Padding over on bare feet, I opened the door to a small, foreshortened figure.

My first impression was that it was some child selling something. Soliciting was forbidden in Starfleet housing, but sometimes groups of teenagers came through from the local schools. Knowing Starfleet personnel had limited leave and huge appetites, they knew we were easy marks for purchasing everything from flash burst popcorn to Girl Scout cookies.

The person at the door did have a small satchel over her shoulder, confirming my impression she had something to sell. And she was short, barely up to my chin. Given Spock had no sweet tooth, and I wasn't going to eat anything that was going to break my diet, I didn't plan to buy. I had only a vague impression of long gently curling dark hair set back from a high brow, huge dark expressive eyes, and a heart shaped face of piercing sweetness that I refused to look at too closely lest it guilt me. "I'm sorry, but we're just not interested in any-" and then I got a real look at the face before me. "Oh, my god." For a moment I clutched the door, lest I give into an intense desire to slam it closed and hide until this visitor went away.

"I'm so sorry to burst in on you, but it turned out Sarek and I had a few hours before-"

"You're Dr. Grayson!" I told her.

She smiled, a bit uncertainly at my intensity. "Yes. I know."

"What are you doing here?"

She drew a breath, non-plussed, the delicate skin over her high cheekbones flushing in a blush of unease. I recollected myself. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I just wasn't expecting- Please," I tossed a wild look over my shoulder at the cluttered apartment behind me, sending a stylus clattering out of my hair, but there was nothing else for it, now. "Please, come in."

"You dropped-"

I grabbed the stylus from the floor.

She stepped into the room, her eyes darting over the apartment. I didn't know if she had ever seen it before, but if she had, I guarantee that she had never seen it in its present state of mid-thesis induced disarray.

"Spock isn't here."

"Yes, I know," she said, turning back to me with a faint smile. "Sarek went to fetch him."

"But he's on duty."

She bit her lip, as if too outright a smile would be improper. "Vulcans are normally very devoted to their duty. But I imagine that under the circumstances, Spock's superiors will give Sarek an hour or two of his time."

I imagined they would, put that way. I belatedly remembered I had yet to introduce myself. "I'm Nyota Uhura."

"I know. I'm Spock's mother," she said, and offered her hand, human style. I took it bemusedly, still staring at her as if she had beamed in out of thin air. I had meant to greet her in perfect Vulcanar. I still had this feeling I had fallen asleep over my books and in a moment I would wake with the print of the netbook keyboard pressed into my face. But no matter how I wished for it, if this were a dream, I wasn't waking up.

I realized I was still clutching her hand and she was staring at me with some puzzlement in her eyes. I let it go abruptly. "I'm sorry. .I've been studying for hours and I've just-," I turned as if to gesture her into the room and saw our quarters with new eyes. And I saw the apartment, me and the situation as she must be seeing it. My netbooks and reference materials were stacked on every flat surface. Sheets of my chapters were tacked up to the walls to better help organize the ideas. Not only did I have no fancy meal prepared, I didn't have any dinner in the house at all, since I knew Spock would not be back until Sunday morning.

And as for me… I had planned to meet my future in-laws dressed in my best, a new gown, designed to stun. Instead I was wearing old gym togs, recycled so often they were soft and comfortable to work in, my nail polish hadn't been touched up in two days, and I had a stylus, no **several** styluses sticking out of my hair. I had a frightening vision this was what my gran would have called _shenzi_.

"Please…sit down." I grabbed a stack of netbooks and pushed aside a place for her to sit, then stood there, realizing it was hopeless. I'd need a good hour to straighten all this up, at least ten minutes to tog myself out in my best, and by then our visitors could be gone.

"Please don't worry –"Amanda began and then the door cycled and Spock entered, deep in conversation with none other than the famous Sarek of Vulcan.

"Nyota, may I present my father, Ambassador Sarek," Spock said to me. "Father, Nyota Uhura."

Sarek turned toward me. Being Vulcan, he only fractionally hesitated as he was confronted with something clearly other than what he expected to see. His gaze went from my bare feet to the top of my stylus studded head, eyes lingering there for a moment before recovering his Vulcan cool and giving me a perfectly proper Vulcan greeting.

"It's an honor to meet you, Ambassador," I said, striving to keep my face Vulcan calm. There was nothing I could do now about it.

He inclined his head to my perfectly accented Vulcanir greeting and my grave Vulcan salute. At least I had recovered enough to get that much right. Though none of my linguistic skills detected any sign that the fact that I could speak his language, at least after a fashion, or knew some of his customs counted in my favor. His searching glance seemed to sear my soul rather than worry about my grammar. Or anything else. From all appearances, he was in typical Vulcan mode, reserving judgment.

Spock greeted his mother and let her hug him in turn. He even returned her embrace in a restrained Vulcan way reminiscent of any teenage boy humoring a female relative.

I glanced at Spock, and jerked my chin to our bedroom, "Can I have a word with you for just a moment?"

Spock blinked and said "Certainly." He seemed a little puzzled, glancing at me curiously. I barely managed not to push him into our room. Before the door closed behind us I was pretty sure I heard Amanda turn a laugh into a throat clearing cough. But I had bigger things on my mind.

"How could you not tell me they were coming?" I hissed at him.

"I didn't know." Spock said, all Vulcan innocent. He looked at me, not only unconcerned but with eyes alight. The Pilot Small expression had turned over, the faint turned under comma had become the little curve in the side of his mouth again. I was glad to see it, even considering what it had cost me. But frustrated.

"Where is all this **telepathy** when we need it?" I wanted to know.

"Nyota—"

"Do you know what the apartment looks like? What I look like? And what are we going to feed them?" I asked

"Sarek and I brought dinner," Spock said with naïve innocence. "And you look fine. Nyota, my parents will be here for only an hour or so. It is illogical for them to have come light-years from Vulcan and thousands of Earth miles and for Sarek to have obtained a leave from work for me if **we** are in here, and **they** are out there."

"What did you bring- "I asked, but Spock was already turning to rejoin his parents.

"Come," he said.

"I have to change," I said

"Why?" he asked. And then went out without waiting for my answer.

I took a look in my mirror, and removed the three styluses from my hair, but the rest of it seemed a lost cause. When I came out, Sarek was at the table opening the few small cartons that he and Spock must have purchased from the bumboats on the way back to the apartment. Spock was splashing their purchases: grapes, snap peas, raspberries, under water. Amanda was walking around the room, peering at the sheets of paper I had hung up.

"Please excuse the disorder," I gestured at the papers and pads cluttering the room. "I have a revised draft of my thesis due next week to Dr. Farnsworth."

"Oh, I know Keitlan," Amanda said, turning to me with a charming smile.

_Of course you do_, I thought.

"You're lucky to have her as a thesis advisor." She turned around, taking in me, Spock the small apartment, the clutter of pads and reference materials. "How this brings back my own student days. Don't you think so, Sarek?"

He glanced from his wife to his surroundings. "I think you are so essentially unchanged, my wife, that there is little difference between then and now to 'bring you back' from or to."

"Flatterer," she accused him.

He didn't deign to contradict her, but I could see what he meant. She had one of those timeless, classic countenances that would probably be the same at sixty as at sixteen. And for all that I had built her up in my mind as this huge, formidable figure, in person she was the exact opposite. Tiny, as diminutive as a child, small hands, small feet, with a sweet trusting countenance that belied her shrewd mind. She could be a perfect little English gentlewoman of a few centuries past. Though I could see what Spock had meant when he had teased me that his mother would be no good with a cudgel stick. She didn't look like she could last two minutes in a Starfleet hand-to-hand class. I could see her hosting a fabulous diplomatic dinner for 200, or being led by her distinguished husband into some glittering diplomatic reception. But I couldn't see her securing an outpost against Klingon invaders, or fighting off an advance force hand to hand. Given that, it was hard to believe she had loomed so overlarge in my dreams. In spite of all that, I couldn't shake the impression that she wouldn't need a weapon to mop the floor with all of us.

And Sarek?

Spock and Sarek had settled at our small dining table, and were engaged in a rapid fire, shorthand discussion in Vulcanir. As much as I had flattered myself as being facile in the language, with all these other distractions, and with the addition of some strange vocabulary in their words, I had lost the thread of their conversation, and it quickly descended into gibberish.

Amanda must have noted my confusion, for she said, "They are talking clan politics. And now they are talking about what fields are being planted with what at home. Nothing very interesting. They are really just catching up on recent news since their last subspace message." She looked up at me. "You are much more beautiful than your holograph."

"Thank you," I said, and then added. "I don't look anything like you, though."

"Well," she laughed a little. "I don't look anything like T'Pau."

I didn't think I could have been any more shell-shocked at the moment, but I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach at this casual conveyance of that bombshell. "Spock's grandmother is T'Pau? T'Pau of Vulcan? **The legendary** T'Pau?"

"He didn't tell you?"

I tried to smile politely, though it was difficult given I was gritting my teeth together hard enough to fracture a few molars. "No, he managed to overlook that small detail."

"Sarek didn't tell me that before we were married either," Amanda said. "I honestly think it is just cultural blindness. Being such common knowledge in Vulcan society, they don't think they need to tell anyone. And perhaps that it shouldn't matter."

"Do you think it doesn't matter?" I asked.

She tilted her head slightly. "It will have an impact on your lives, of course. But what matters most is that you love my son. And that he loves you."

"Love…is not what I think would matter in Vulcan society."

"Surely by now you know better than to take Vulcan society at face value," she said, raising a brow Vulcan style.

I looked away from her too discerning eyes. "He thinks the world of you," I said. "You're brilliant; you're amusing; you sing like an angel."

Her lips twitched. "Funny," she said. "That's pretty much what he's said to me about you."

I let out a breath. "I've been a little …worried," I confessed apologetically. "I was perfectly fine admiring you, when you were parsecs away. It was only when you were going to show up, all maternal perfection, in our backyard that you suddenly seemed like a threat."

"Not all maternal perfection," she countered. "He couldn't have said I was much of a cook. I was always too busy teaching to do much more than just throw together quick meals."

"I'm not much of a cook either. I had planned to give you this grand dinner," I fretted. "And now you are here and I don't have a thing in the apartment to feed you."

She laughed again. I gave in and fell under her spell just like Sarek and Spock.

"Your thesis is fascinating," she said. "I hope you don't mind my looking."

"No, of course not," I said. The unreality of the situation was finally fading from my mind. After all that I had worried about regarding this first encounter, as differently as I had imagined it, here it was and it had finally happened. I could understand what Sarek and Spock were saying now. Sarek was talking to him about Starfleet appropriation legislation and Spock was listening avidly and making a few key points.

I looked back at Amanda, and saw that she had some of my sheets around her, and was flipping through the pages of one of my netbooks. "Have you ever considered," she asked, "the theory that given sensory perception necessarily biologically limits linguistic thought, an enhancement of new sensory modes can result in enhanced relational modes?" She looked at me, hopeful, smiling, charming. "Not just perceptually, but cognitively? There are studies by Tharlon of Andoria. While there's necessarily a learning curve before comprehension is enhanced, and some species, even humans, have a limit on the flexibility of neural adaptation, even for humans there are drugs that can restore such flexibility. It's seems any communicative model has to include the requisite modes for what is required when perception must be, by physical restrictions alone, limited."

"Are you suggesting that a sightless velopod can somehow communicate with a rainbow heliopticad?" I asked, intrigued, but skeptical.

"Well," she said, and tilted a netpad toward me, began to sketch out what she meant. By the time we looked up from this, Sarek and Spock had moved onto the food as they conversed. Sarek was eating raspberries, while Spock demolished the bowel of snap peas, interspersed with grapes.

"I'm sure we can do better than that," I said, as Amanda and I joined them. "We can go out… or order something in."

"Thank you my dear, but I'm afraid we hardly have time," Amanda said, reaching for a snap pea. "These are scrumptious. Such a nice change from three days of reconstituted starship fare. I don't see how you two plan to survive on it."

"It is one of the drawbacks of Starfleet service," Spock admitted.

"Hmmm," Amanda said, giving her son a look compounded of affection and exasperation. "There are alternatives."

We ate the peas and the raspberries and grapes. In true diplomatic form, our distinguished guests behaved as if it were a perfectly natural meal. When they were finished, Spock gave me an uncertain look. "We may have dessert. Nyota, there is still some ice cream, is there not?"

I had never touched the pint of vanilla Swiss almond which Spock had brought home that long ago evening. "Yes."

Spock retrieved it from the freezer. I got dishes and spoons.

"Chocolate," Amanda said, raising an eyebrow, Vulcan style.

I blushed a little again. There was all sort of rumors that chocolate was a mild Vulcan aphrodisiac. I don't normally kiss and tell, so all I will say is although Spock didn't have a sweet tooth and seldom indulged in chocolate, he didn't have a need for any artificial aids. If chocolate was, he'd never shown any sign of it affecting him, nor any need for it. With or without chocolate, I had no complaints.

We shared out the ice cream, and I noticed Sarek didn't hesitate to eat the Swiss almonds. He and Amanda did seem to sit a little closer, and Amanda smiled at her husband once in a way that didn't leave any doubt that she was human in love as well as in marriage. But ice cream, chocolate or not, her mind soon switched to her son's career.

"I completely understand a desire to be on the forefront of scientific endeavor," she said. "But I'll never understand this fascination you've developed for war mongering. Or whatever it is you do in this Games and Theory. You certainly didn't come by that from me."

"Amanda," Sarek said reprovingly.

I thought it was interesting that it was Spock's human mother rather than his Vulcan father who seemed more opposed to his Starfleet career.

She gave me a dazzling smile. "And I'm sure we could find a place for you at the Vulcan Science Academy," she offered.

I nearly choked on my ice cream at her astute perception of what had, before I met Spock, once been one of my ultimate dreams.

"And Spock, of course, has a long standing offer of an instructorship there, from the High Council itself," she continued.

"Nyota has her degree to complete," Spock said calmly, as if used to these machinations from this quarter.

"Your theories are fascinating," she said, smiling charmingly. "I know I'd love to work with you. I'm sure Keitlan would understand."

And I had no doubt that she knew how to give a lesson, in spite of that guilelessly innocent face. I understood a little more how she had wound up with Sarek. He probably hadn't realized what had hit him.

Sarek and Spock meanwhile, were trading glances rife with Vulcan suppressed amusement. "Mother, stop trying to steal my bride before we are married," Spock said.

"I don't understand why you are **waiting**," Amanda said, with a politely retrained nod to our obviously shared living arrangements.

"Starfleet is conventional enough that it is not considered "done" for an officer and a student to marry," Spock said patiently. "You know we must wait till Nyota graduates."

"On Vulcan that would hardly matter. And there is a whole community of scholars there whom Nyota could study with. Including myself."

"Mother," Spock said, shaking his head in amusement, "you know that with Father's travels you are hardly ever **resident** on Vulcan."

"Well, that's another material point," Amanda said, refusing to be daunted. "You two need to carry on your father's and my traditions there, in Council **and** at the VSA."

"No doubt they will, in time, my wife," Sarek said, looking up from his finished desert dish. "It is quite clear to me that Spock's tactical abilities in Games and Theory were not entirely inherited from our shared Vulcan warrior ancestors."

Amanda scowled at him, while blushing to the roots of her hair. Meanwhile Spock lowered his head to conceal a smile.

"However," Sarek concluded, "we **also** must consider the time…"

"Oh, we can't need to leave yet" Amanda protested looking at her watch in distress.

"I entirely regret that it is indeed so."

Amanda gave a meaningful look to Sarek. He responded by taking a small box from his tunic.

"We wanted to give you this," Amanda said solemnly, taking Sarek's hand in hers, "just to welcome you to the family."

Inside was a necklace, a tiny figure of a lematya, set with inlaid gems.

"A family symbol," Sarek said.

"It's beautiful." I looked at Spock. "Would you?"

He stepped behind me. I held my long hair out of the way while he fastened it around my neck. Amanda leaned against her husband, watching contentedly.

"Thank you," I said, telling myself firmly that Starfleet officers do not cry.

They left us both with family gestures of affection. Sarek shocked me that after trading a familial embrace with his son, gravely extended the same to me.

Amanda sidestepped Vulcan tradition with what I was beginning to recognize as typical directness, in spite of her deceptively sweet looks. She hugged her son, then kissed me on the cheek, standing on tiptoe to do so, and looked me straight in the eyes. "Do consider what I said."

If little angels needed to learn how to give orders, she could give them lessons.

"I…I will," I stuttered, momentarily caught in her spell. I suddenly had a real commiseration for Sarek. I wondered if he had ever had a chance.

The door closed behind them, and suddenly it was just Spock and me. Alone. I shook myself as if coming out of a spell.

"There, you see," Spock said, totally ignoring the disorder of the apartment, my lack of decent dress, his bare ability to get away from work, not to mention the lack of any coherent dinner. "I told you it would go perfectly well."

"Well!" I echoed, flabbergasted. "You call this well?"

"What went wrong?" he asked, raising a quizzical brow.

"What went right? I mean, your parents were perfectly charming, but this was nothing like what I had imagined or planned."

"Indeed?" he asked, looking clueless but content. "I don't understand. But what does that matter? I told you that my parents were nice. You can see that my mother likes you. And my father gave you the symbol of our clan. All these minor things which seemed to so concern you before proved groundless."

She did indeed seem to like me, I thought. That much had been genuine. But I also had a sneaking suspicion that as much as she did like me, she would have overlooked a great deal at the prospect of getting her much loved son home again.

"And the dinner," he concluded, "was delicious."

"It was supposed a gourmet meal," I complained. "Not raw vegetables, fruit and ice cream."

"Vulcans **prefer** raw fruits and vegetables," he said. "And do you know how many supposedly gourmet meals my parents have had to sit through?" Spock asked. "They wished to meet you and see me. Dinner was never an issue."

I opened my mouth to deliver a killing retort. But I didn't get to say anything. Maybe it's true that chocolate is really a Vulcan aphrodisiac. Spock drew me to him and kissed me.

"You were wonderful," he said. "But I only have another half hour's leave," he added, lips against my throat, inches from that little lematya pendant.

"Then we had better hurry if we are going to make up for lost time," I said.

And so we did.

xxx

I'm not sure how news of Spock's parents' visit traveled through Starfleet campus. Sarek certainly would have been seen on campus when he went to extricate Spock from duty. Or perhaps someone had seen Sarek when he and Spock at the bumboat vendors. Perhaps it was that Spock's Pilot Small expression had shifted to amused, rather than disappointed.

Perhaps it was that little pendant.

Gaila certainly noticed it. "Your loss, Nyota," she said. "I can still set you up with a **real** cat."

Delia from our fight class noticed it. She saluted me with her pugel stick and gestured with her long, wickedly pointed nail at the little charm. "I hope you're not going to lose your edge, Uhura, just because you're **settled**." She made it sound like a fate worse than death.

My Gran sent me a message, letting me know Sarek and Amanda had called her to introduce themselves. They sent her a lovely selection of flowers. My Gran managed to refrain from mentioning, to me and hopefully to them, that it didn't compare to a good goat.

And Dr. Farnsworth, my thesis advisor, reviewing my latest thesis chapters, pointed to a section I had recently added. "Your dinner must have been quite a success, based on this."

I didn't pretend not to understand. "Do you think I shouldn't include this part?" I asked.

She raised a brow. "That would be a little insulting to your new mother-in-law, wouldn't it? Not to mention that it is brilliant. You did collaborate together on this section?"

"We worked on it for a few minutes," I admitted.

"I could hardly object to your having another thesis advisor," she said. "You must have made quite an impression."

I thought about it, from my gym clothes, to my stylus studded hair, to my thesis cluttered apartment, to our _avante guarde_ dinner…

"I guess I did," I replied.

She nodded complacently. "I congratulate you. I knew you had it in you, my dear. You gave a great dinner party."

And the truth is that in spite of everything, I guess I really did.

_Fini_

**Guess Who is Coming to Dinner**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**March 2011**

_See also in this series_

_Linguistics; Hello, Again; Guess Who is Coming to Dinner, The Last Unicorn and What It's Like_


End file.
